According to reports leaked from the secretive kingdom, 12 people have been executed in North Korea for making a porn film, copies of which are said to have been sold on the lucrative DVD black market and in China. Among the dead was actress and pop star Hyon Song-wol, who is believed to have had a relationship with the country's leader, Kim Jong-un, over a decade ago.
The unconfirmed by detailed reports say the group also included members of the popular Unhasu Orchestra and Moranbong and Wangjaesan bands. They were executed with machine guns, with their colleagues and families forced to watch. Their family members were then sent to internment camps as North Korea holds that criminal behaviour is caused by 'bad blood' and that the next two generations of a convicted person's family should be treated as criminal too.
According to the South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo, Hyon and Kim knew each other when they were teenagers and had a relationship which the latter's father, Kim Jong-il, stepped in to end. Both have since married and Kim's wife, Ri Sol-ju, is also a singer. There have been rumours of professional rivalry between her and Hyon.
The rules around filmmaking have relaxed under Kin Jong-un's leadership but pornography is still strongly taboo, with even kissing in romance films generally frowned upon.
